Brave Enough
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Based on the "Entangled" duology by Amy Rose Capetta. Spoilers for "Unmade". Cade brings home a baby orbital, but can Rennik accept it? Cade/Rennik.


Brave Enough

By Laura Schiller

Based on: _Entangled_ series

Copyright: Amy Rose Capetta

/

"What is this?" asked Rennik, his tone flat.

Cade knew immediately this conversation wouldn't go the way she had hoped, but stubbornness made her lift her chin and dig in her heels anyway.

"You're the Hatchum. I'd have thought you'd know better than me."

She opened the latch of the portable cage she was carrying. The life form inside it tumbled out, hovered in the air for a moment, then fell back into the cage, chirping weakly. It was a ball of cream-colored fur with brown spots and blinking black eyes, small enough to fit into one of Cade's palms.

It was a young orbital. Cade didn't know exactly how young, but enough to make her worry. She had padded the cage with soft cloth and was feeding it as many vegetables as it would eat, but she didn't know if that was enough.

She needed Rennik's expertise – and here was Rennik, frowning as if she'd just broken every taboo in Hatchum culture. (For all she knew, she might have.)

"Where did you even find it?" he asked, curiosity overcoming his resentment, if only for a moment.

"Lee did, on her last trading run. She saved it from a gang of pirates who were going to sell it to a zoo."

Cade didn't mention what Lee had done to the pirates in the process, but she knew Rennik's imagination could fill in the blanks.

Lee made a lot of trading runs, with or without her wife Ayumi. She couldn't shake off the nomadic habits of a lifetime, and all the better for the rest of them, because their new settlement on Earth was still small and fragile. Learning to grow food after a thousand years in space and on alien planets was no easy task, and they depended on the supplies Lee and her fellow traders could bring back in return for (sustainably gathered) raw material from the planet.

They had a decent life here. The hut they'd built out of wood and salvaged material from the wrecked _Everlast_ was as comfortable as they could make it, with blankets and old books and irregular furniture almost like their old quarters on Renna. Cade played music and Rennik fixed things for a living; their friends came to visit almost every day. It would never be perfect, but it was good …

… except in moments like this, when Cade was forcibly reminded of the wounds inside them both that would never heal.

Rennik's jaw tightened when Cade referred to the concept of putting the orbital in a zoo, but this didn't seem to translate for him into sympathy or even pity for the little life form.

"And you think this is it, do you? You think I can replace Renna so easily? This specimen is inferior. Look at it." He jabbed a finger towards the cage. "It cannot even fly."

His precise, book-learned English sliced the air like the cold steel of his ceremonial blades. That was the problem with opposites attracting; if his anger ran cold, Cade's ran hot. Mostly they balanced each other out, but sometimes they caused an explosion – such as now.

"Yeah, well, you replaced Moira too, didn't you?" Cade snarled. "And you're snugging right, this specimen's inferior. It's been half starved and kept in a cage for so long that it doesn't even want to come out! I thought for once you'd want to pay some attention to the living, but the dead will always win, won't they? Because they're _perfect_."

The orbital wailed, its empathy disturbed by the anger around it. Cade snatched up the cage and tucked it under her arm, resolving to put as much distance between them and Rennik as possible if that was the only way to cool down. One of the good things about Earth was all the open air to storm through when you were angry.

"Cadence – "

Despite herself, she turned around.

Rennik's gray-brown eyes, the color of his lost other half, were filled with so much pain that it made her own eyes burn. His skin, already paler than even the whitest human, was almost gray. She'd known that throwing Moira's name at him was a low blow, but he looked as if he'd been stabbed. Or as if he'd done the stabbing - and wished he hadn't.

"I'm sorry," Cade blurted out before her pride could stop her. "I never meant to – I say stupid things when I'm mad, you know that - "

"If I had been on Hatch when Renna died, I would have been expected to replace her within the week."

That was such an unexpected piece of information that it threw Cade's chain of bitter thoughts into complete confusion. Rennik almost never spoke of his home planet. Cade had often wondered if, beneath all his loyalty to his human friends, he was still homesick. Now that the rest of them had found their home, it had to be even worse for him, knowing his planet was still out there, but he would never be permitted to return.

Seeing a live orbital again for the first time in years must have made all his memories of home come crashing back.

"_The parts are small_," he said in a bleak monotone, as if quoting something he had heard a thousand times. "_Only the whole is great._ One Hatchum or orbital should always be able to replace another as long as the group still functions. But when I lost Renna, I … I didn't know how to go on living, let alone raise another ship. Attachment has always been my weakness, I told you that. That's why my parents sent me away."

_Dregs._ And here was Cade, throwing that weakness in his face, when she had always been one of the few people in the universe who understood and even loved him for it.

"It's _not _a weakness," she said fiercely. "I never said it was. And if it is, it's one the entire colony shares, okay? Me too."

The pain in his eyes softened, but did not fade. He approached her very slowly, as if unsure of his welcome, and placed a tentative hand on top of hers where she was holding the handle of the orbital's cage.

The young spaceship-to-be let out an inquisitive chirp. It was the first sound Cade had heard from it that wasn't distressed. Could it sense a compatriot nearby? Did it already like him?

"But it is," said Rennik. "I am. If I were to bond with this orbital and raise it as my own, and then lose it … if I were to fail it the way I failed Renna … " He choked on the name. He didn't even have the words for what would happen.

Cade wished she could tell him that everything would be okay. The Unmaker cult was defeated, after all, and the few survivors who had joined their side were adapting well enough. No one in the colony would hurt an innocent life form. But it wasn't that simple, and they both knew it. Life was too unpredictable to believe with any certainty that you were safe.

There was one thing she could be certain of, however: Rennik's sense of honor, even when he was being a total spacecadet.

"First off, you did _not_ fail Renna," she said, putting the cage down on the driftwood table he had carved for them so she could hold his face in both her hands and look him straight in the eyes. "The Unmakers did when they killed her, no one else. You've already had your revenge on them and it didn't help, did it?"

"It did ... for a few moments."

He smiled darkly at the memory of the beating he had inflicted on their cult leader, from which Cade had had to physically pull him away. If she'd done it then, maybe she could do it now.

"We can't guarantee what will happen to this little one," she argued, fighting for him as fiercely as she'd been attacking him before. "But I know you, Rennik. You're the bravest man I've ever known. I know this one will never be like Renna … I know _I'll_ never mean as much as Moira to you … but you care anyway. That's what makes you brave. I know it's an awful lot to ask for … but please don't stop."

She went hot and cold as she spoke, her hands trembling as they touched him. She had learned to make herself vulnerable over the years, but rarely to this degree, even while making love. _Please don't stop loving me_ was the most vulnerable thing she'd ever said in her life.

Old instincts screamed at her that she'd made a terrible mistake, that he'd laugh or recoil or walk away. But she stayed where she was and dared to look up into his eyes.

All four of his pupils were dilated, his eyes as dark as the starry night skies of their new home.

"Cadence … " He pulled her closer. "Let me ask you something. Which of our neighbors do you care about more: Lee or Ayumi?"

"Wh-_what?"_

He didn't give her time to become indignant at the absurdity of the question, but went on: "Exactly. You don't know. Even though you met Lee first, you couldn't decide anymore. That is exactly the way I feel. Every time I love someone, I love them uniquely. Every time I lose someone, the hole they tear in my life is unique as well. You will understand, I'm sure, if that makes me think twice before risking any more holes. But that does _not _mean," his hands gripped her waist until she was flush against him, "That I consider you interchangeable, or measure one against the other. I love you as I love no one else in the universe, Cadence. Do I make myself clear?"

"First-class, Captain," she murmured, before standing up on tiptoe and kissing him.

If their first kisses had been like spinning into orbit, this one was like gravity – the Earth gravity her body had been made for. He held her with the perfect firmness, neither crushing her nor letting her fall, and she gave herself up to him with complete trust.

It was a while before she came back to reality, but when she did, the first thing she noticed was a sound.

The little orbital was purring.

It was a small sound, like one of the bumblebees in their garden, but it was unmistakably coming from the cage.

"Have you touched it yet?" Rennik asked, unlocking the latch.

"No … should I have?"

"Only if you intend to become its next pilot," said Rennik with typical matter-of-factness, "They imprint, you know."

"Like ducklings?"

"If ducklings are telepathic, yes."

He lifted the orbital out of its cage, held it in both hands, lifted it up to his eye level, and began speaking softly to it in Hatchum. Cadence had never heard him speak his native language before, and had been wondering if he even knew it anymore, or if he'd deliberately rejected it along with the rest of his culture. She'd never known how beautiful it was. She'd imagined harsh consonants and a flat monotone, but his language flowed in musical rhythms like the waves of the twelve oceans he had described to her once. She wanted to write a song in it.

"What did you say to it?" she asked when he was done.

"To him," Rennik corrected, petting the orbital, whose purr had deepened. "This orbital is male. He asked me who we were and what had happened to the 'hungry ones' – I assume he was referring to his captors. I told him my name and yours, and that they would never hurt him again."

"That's right, little guy," Cade crooned. "Listen to your pilot."

The furball bounced up, attempting another hover, only to land safely in Rennik's arms again and let out a squeal of triumph.

"We've got our work cut out for us, haven't we?" Cade asked, grinning. "Once he starts flying for real - "

" – no breakable object in the house will be safe," said Rennik in mock despair, smiling back. "Universe keep us all."


End file.
